Father, foodie, home cook and tech geek and recent b-school grad. I eat paleo, love CrossFit and wish I would hike more.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

My weekend with Kid 3

This weekend, Heather and Kids 1 and 2 had a swim meet. Kid 3 and I stayed home, partially because it is easier on him and because I had an MBA small group meeting in the middle of Saturday.

So, he and I got to spend the weekend together. It was mixed, as he came to the team meeting with me (I was the first to break the bring your kid to the group meeting), but we got to enjoy ourselves too. But most importantly we had beautiful weather while we were out and about.

We got to our meeting location early, so we played frisbee in the parking lot of Building 34 at Microsoft's Redmond campus. After the meeting, we played frisbee more in the parking lot and decided that we needed to find a park, not a parking lot.

I thought that there was a Burger King in Redmond (Google Voice 411 proved me wrong) so we drove back to Issaquah and got food to go there and then headed to Tibbet's park. We played frisbee, watched kids play baseball and then Parker played on the playground and I read a case study. Kid 3 eventually decided he had enough; he was getting hot wearing a black shirt.

We had a lot of fun and Heather called and said that we should eat dinner outside. I stopped at Safeway and bought steak, shrimp, asparagus, sweet potatoes, red onions and portabello caps to grill. After I had cooked everything, I got the validation of a lifetime, Heather said, "You overdid it with the vegetables." Can you believe it, too many vegetables? And what she doesn't realize is that I only cooked half of the vegetables I bought! There is a pork tenderloin in the fridge for tonight.

As it started to cool off, my arms were itchy. I thought at first that there were bugs out, but I actually got a light sunburn on my arms. Is spring really here?

Sunday held another half day of swim meet for Heather and the other kids. So, Parker and I made muffins and then made lists of what we should do. After he made his own Remember the Milk list, we realized that we needed to brush our teeth.

He joined me in the master bathroom and we brushed our teeth together. He brought his timer (pretty good for a 6 year old) and we brushed for 2 minutes. At the end, he said, "That was a long time." Maybe he doesn't use that timer all the time. But even more funny, he decided that we needed to write down on our lists that we brushed our teeth!

I had some reading to do and then we played Wii (he did check it off his list) and we headed out to do some errands (on my list). We drove to the outlets in North Bend to buy some soccer shorts to replace some that I got in college and Heather decided were dated, too short and just plain ugly.

We decided that we would eat lunch there too. Kid 3 was impressed that there was a Taco Time, Burger King and McDonald's all in the same place. I took advantage of that - he got chicken tenders from McDonalds, I got a cappuccino from the McCafe and then I got a burger from Burger King.

The unsnobby coffee from McDonalds is crap. They don't even steam the milk by hand. They have a machine that froths the milk and dumps the milk and coffee in the cup at the same time - all comingled and not a good cappuccino. It is cheap, but not good.

At Burger King, I decided I would have a Steakhouse Burger - the new Angus burger with onion crisps and A1 sauce. The guy behind the counter asked if I wanted the Classic or the Loaded version - has it been around long enough to be awarded "Classic" status? I wanted the lower calorie one and Kid 3 dumped his McDonalds drink on the floor of Burger King. We took my sandwhich and went across the street to the outside seating at McDonalds (and free refills on spilled drinks).

I saved $5 on shorts, $1.20 on gas (with my $ 0.10 per gallon discount at Safeway) and it only cost me $3.50 in gas to go there and back; less than one gallon in my MINI, and we got an enjoyable drive out of it too.

Kid 3 added to his list "Go to a lot of stores" after we got home. He sure knows how to make a to do list look as if he'd been productive!

All in all, it has been a fun weekend. I've spent a lot of time with Kid 3, a lot of time working on school and enjoyed the nice weather! I hope that you are able to take advantage of the good weather as well!